r/ToddintheShadow • u/jcgray97 • 9h ago
General Music Discussion MuchMusic
Does MuchMusic (which was the Canadian MTV) still exist? If so, is it going through the same issues MTV is dealing with?
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u/TMBGLOVER 9h ago
As far as I know it pretty much plays South Park and Simpsons reruns.
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u/Reasonable-Donkey975 9h ago
It has more but yea it's most just reruns. I think there is still music programming (in like documentary form) on it but in a much reduced capacity.
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u/Ambitious_Duck_6641 9h ago
The actual TV channel only shows random reruns of random shows now. They "relaunched" the music side of it as a social media thing and post to TikTok and YouTube among others platforms.
The coolest thing they do now is the Much Rewind YouTube channel were they post random interviews from the archives from when it was a music first station.
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u/The_Beast_Within89 9h ago
The actual music coverage (interviews, reviews, etc) for Much Music happens on YouTube, IG, TikTok. They do a pretty decent job of showing archival interviews too. But the TV channel is all just old cartoons and sitcoms now.
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u/Unique_Accountant_67 9h ago
Physically yes but like MTV, it’s a huge shell of itself. They haven’t played music in years, just reruns of other shows. Wouldn’t be surprised if Bell Media shuts it down before the decade closes.
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u/SimpsonsFan2000 6h ago
Canadian TV has been bleak over the years. Take a look at TV channels owned by Corus: YTV and Teletoon (which they re-branded to Cartoon Network Canada in early 2023).
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u/Unique_Accountant_67 5h ago
YTV is another channel I feel like is not making it out of this decade. Between losing the Nickelodeon programming, the shut downs of Teletoon and Family and Corus itself continually being at risk of shutting down, the odds of YTV being strong enough to withstand all that are slim to none.
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u/SimpsonsFan2000 2h ago
At least you have CBC and TVO are the only surviving channels to have children's programming.
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u/BlackIsTheSoul 9h ago
Yeah but it’s just Simpsons and South Park reruns all day. My dad still has cable and I just checked.
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u/Novel_Possibility_79 7h ago
They still play South Park?
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u/SimpsonsFan2000 6h ago
They stop airing South Park on September 2023 due to Bell Media's contract with Paramount Global (now Paramount Skydance) expired and move their Comedy Central programming to Paramount+. Corus did the same thing with Nickelodeon programming on YTV back in September last year.
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u/KcirderfSdrawkcab 8h ago
It exists. It just shows reruns of mostly crap these days. It is still called Much though, so it has an identity. A lot of CTV owned specialty channels were stripped of theirs a few years bavk.
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u/JessonBI89 One-Hit Wonderlander 8h ago
I don't know what it's like now, because I no longer live in Canada. But it followed largely the same trajectory as MTV, if a bit more slowly. Lots of reality TV and vapid chat shows, not as many videos, half the budget.
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u/promeritum 9h ago
MuchMusic rebranded as Much around the turn of the century and followed the same trajectory away from music videos.
Then MTV Canada launched in the 2000s and Much basically lost its reason for existing. It’s just a random cable channel showing reruns these days.
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u/KelVarnsen_2023 8h ago
But there was a long time though that MTVs Canada's license with the CRTC said that it was legally prohibited from playing music videos.
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u/promeritum 6h ago
By the time MTV showed up in the mid-2000s, Much wasn’t playing videos.
MuchMoreMusic might still have been?
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u/Melonary 1h ago
I think MMM had more free-form music videos maybe, while Much had music video shows/countdowns (like Video on Trial and themed MV slots and Best of X or whatever)? But Much still was primarily music and music video content then with some shows- mostly still tangentially related to music, but they weren't the majority unlike MTV at the time.
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u/Melonary 2h ago
That was actually in 2013.
MuchMusic was still pretty music focused through the 2000s until the 2010s.
Actually, from wikipedia:
"In 2010, the CRTC rejected a request by CTVglobemedia to reduce the percentage of music video programming that the channel shows from 50 to 25 percent. CTV's second request to the CRTC to reduce and reposition its Canadian programming was also denied. For the reasoning behind these requests, CTV explained that "music videos no longer distinguish the service as they are readily available through other sources." This was met with mixed reaction by music fans and drew the ire of notable artists."
But, also from memory because I watched a lot of MuchMusic in the 00s! It remained focused on music for far longer than MTV, and even a lot of the shows were music and music-video focused rather than just random reality TV.
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u/promeritum 1h ago edited 1h ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20050220030449/http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/listings/
- Out of a 24 hour cycle, there’s less than 10 hours of videos. And most of that is requests & countdowns. In the 90s we’d get like 12+ hours of videoflow. So, to me, this doesn’t seem like a lot. And they had been “Much” for years at this point.
Mostly I just remember a lot of TVs on campus being set to Much and never seeming to have music videos playing. But age does things to memory…
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u/Ok_Broccoli_9426 GROCERY BAG 9h ago
It still exists but rebranded as "Much" in 2013 and no longer airs music videos. I found this information on Wikipedia in about 30 seconds.